Thai Pie

September 10, 2013

On my mission to showcase the craft of vegan pizza-making, eat all my favorite cuisines via pizza, demonstrate how American food kicks ass,...

On my mission to showcase the craft of vegan pizza-making, eat all my favorite cuisines via pizza, demonstrate how American food kicks ass, and eat at least a whole avocado a day, I arbitrarily landed on Thai today, when I spun the through the list of brainstormed pizzas to make,Wheel-of-Fortune-style-- that is, if Wheel-of-Fortune had anything to do with opening up your fridge and seeing what in the hell kind of pizza you could make based on what is inside of it.

As the base, I layed down homemade curry paste rather than red sauce, and piled it high with pan-fried eggplant, sliced shallots, chopped peanuts and scallions, after dousing it with some Golden Mountain sauce. That sauce is what unicorns use as shampoo to make their hair really sleek and shiny.

Alex's slices.

These are my slices. You can tell they are mine based on the proper amount of avocado on each slice. Being flush with avocado is as close a second to being flush with cash that I have yet to come.

Thai Pie:

Curry Paste:

1/2 red onion or 2 shallots, peeled and roughly chopped

4-5 cloves garlic

2 stalks lemongrass, chopped

1 inch knob ginger

2 thai red chiles

1 poblano chile

1 cup cherry tomatoes

1/2 cup coconut milk

pinch salt

1 tablespoon golden mountain sauce

the peel of 1 lime

2 teaspoons coconut oil or peanut oil

2 asian eggplants, sliced into thin rounds

1 shallot, peeled and sliced thin

1 jalapeño, sliced into paper-thin rounds

3 scallions, sliced into rounds

1/3 cup peanuts, chopped

1 pizza dough

1 tablespoon cornmeal

1 avocado, diced

cilantro, chopped

juice of 1 lime

Make the curry paste by pulsing all the ingredients in a food processor, scraping down the sides to make sure everything is incorporated. In a cast-iron skillet, heat the coconut or peanut oil over medium heat. Add the eggplant and cook for about 10 minutes, flipping the slices to ensure each slice is nicely browned on both sides. Turn off heat and set aside.

Spread the cornmeal evenly over the pizza stone. Lay down the rolled out pizza dough and fold over any overlapping edges to form an outer crust. Preheat oven to 500ºF.

Spread the curry paste onto the dough, less for a less spicy pizza, more for a fiery pizza. Evenly place the eggplant slices over the curry paste. Sprinkle with shallot slices, jalapeño slices, scallions and peanuts. Bake for 12 minutes, until crust is nicely browned. Remove from oven and sprinkle chopped avocado, cilantro and drizzle with lots of fresh lime juice. Serve!